Shop Once, Gift Twice, is the tagline of one of my favorite annual events and one that seemingly kicks off the holiday season each year in our foothills community. Evergreen Audubon has participated each year for many years, selling our nature-themed wares and engaging with shoppers from around the metro area. We love sharing our mission.
The 25th Annual Alternative Gift Fair was held on Saturday and Sunday, November 8th and 9th at the Evergreen Lutheran Church on Highway 73 in Evergreen.
If you are unfamiliar with it, the Fair features nonprofit and charity organizations that sell their goods to benefit their various causes, receiving 100% of the proceeds. You see beautiful handmade crafts, jewelry, textiles and other gift items from groups that are local plus those representing countries around the world. Hence that tagline – Shop Once, Gift Twice.
Evergreen Audubon brought our nestboxes, singing plush birds, balsa wood animal and bird ornaments, crocheted and knitted owls (handmade by our very own Lisa Wald!), bird and animal earrings, local field guides, hand-painted bookmarks (by our own Kim Hamilton!), field totes, and animal/bird puzzles for kids. New this year were felted coin purses (which sold out), and anti-collision decals. In fact just about everything sold well, especially our nestboxes! We had to return to the Nature Center twice over the weekend to restock!
And by the way, we have all these items on our retail shelves in the Nature Center including these new anti-collision decals, called Window Gems. They are static cling and prismatic with different patterns to choose from, like butterflies and leaves. The idea is to reduce bird collisions on our windows whether at our houses or even a business.
We wanted to share the good news that Evergreen Audubon and Nature Center did very well at the Fair. We improved 30% over last year and totaled $3254 in sales.
We had 20 incredible volunteers who stepped up, 6 of whom were Board members. THANK YOU all!! Your support meant everything!
The Fair committee also reported that the total number of shoppers over 2 days was up from 2024 – over 1100 visitors.
If you missed the Fair this year, be sure to put it on your 2026 calendar. See you there!